


Cross

by gardnerhill



Series: A Fiend in Feline Form [4]
Category: Basil of Baker Street - All Media Types, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Animals, Community: watsons_woes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 16:49:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3657927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s certainly bad luck for ONE of them to cross the other’s path, isn’t it? (For Watson’s Woes March 2015 prompt “Unlucky”).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cross

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after, and references, my story [Doc and Mabel](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1680638) in my series [A Fiend in Feline Form](http://archiveofourown.org/series/111554).

“Bad luck,” folks said about what happened, which is a load of bunk.  
  
Yes, the day happened to be the 13th of the month – and yes, it was indeed Friday. Yes, the cat was black as soot, with a cold hungry gleam in its green eyes. But bad luck had nothing to do with what happened – only a sequence of events that was inevitable and coincidental at the same time, and unfortunate for the party concerned.  
  
Basil of Baker Street and I were exhausted after spending the night watching for a gang of Royal Mousedom Bank robbers who never showed, much to Basil’s chagrin and annoyance (“But everything pointed to the robbery coming off tonight! I’d reasoned it out!”) which made him ill-tempered; I did not look forward to spending the evening with him in this mood. The weather was as foul as my friend’s disposition, and no cabs came along in our direction at this early hour; we were forced to slog home in the slush and dirty snow of mid-March that only an industrial city can produce. Our minds were less on our surroundings than on the thought of a hot bath to remove the chill and the city grime, and a hot breakfast to silence our demanding stomachs.  
  
“Perhaps tonight,” Basil said, which was when the cat pounced.  
  
Not bad luck at all. That was distraction by the ghastly weather, exhaustion, short tempers for both of us, thrown off-balance already by Basil having a rare miscalculation in his deductions – and plain, momentary stupidity on both our parts. But that’s all a predator needs to gain an edge in London alleys, that culmination of factors that can end with loved ones at a funeral with no corpse, murmuring “Just a stroke of bad luck” to each other.  
  
I went rolling, mind screeching CATCATCATCATCATCATCAT. When I got up – I saw that I was able to get up. Not I, but Basil was pinned down by both the beast’s front needle-clawed paws digging into his back through his tweed coat. “I got you,” he mewed at his would-be prey triumphantly, ignoring me completely.  
  
A sideways blow from a cat’s paw does wonders to focus a mouse’s mind.  
  
_A youngster, barely more than a kitten and still learning how to hunt, needing both paws to hold on to the lighter mouse of a pair, and wasting time in gloating over its catch rather than simply biting its head off. It ignored me, assuming (as would be right in any other case) that any free mouse would flee in terror from a feline._  
  
_A street kit – it had the lean sides of an alley-bred beast rather than the plumpness of a human’s pet cat – a youngster with the accent of the beasts who live in these alleys, so he would have been raised with street stories and street warnings about everything that posed a threat around here._  
  
I ran right up to the black cat. “Let him go, filthy beast!” I shouted. “Or I’ll kill you too!”  
  
The kit didn’t let go of Basil, but his head whipped up to stare at me and hiss with disbelief and rage at a mouse threatening him as if I was a rat his equal in size and strength.  
  
I glared up into those young, murderous green eyes, and said no word. I just whipped my tail around – so he could see the stubby end of it.  
  
The cat’s eyes widened.

Still without a word, I tore off my jacket, waistcoat and shirt in one go and turned my back on the beast.  
  
The sound that came out of the kitten was a mew – of terror. I glared over my shoulder and saw his pupils round with fear. He’d seen the three long hairless scars I bore.  
  
“So you’ve heard of the Catkiller, have you?” Basil’s voice, as level and cold as if he held a pistol on his prey instead of being pinned by his claws. “The mouse who blinded and killed the surest mouse-hunter in London, lost only his tail-tip in the fight, and still wears his enemy’s claw-marks on his back.”  
  
So perhaps bad luck did exist to the extent that I had an unfair advantage over that catling. You see, I have a reputation, based on an incident that happened here not long ago, and gleefully spread by the rats who’d witnessed it. Heard of me? That kit was probably scared into obeying his mother with stories of me coming to get him.  
  
“Let him go,” I said into those terrified eyes, slowly and in a deadly low tone. “And go away. And I will let you live.”  
  
Basil gasped for air as both paws flew off his back, and like a streak of black lightning the catling was gone.  
  
My friend was already sitting up heedless of the dirty snow, wheezing for breath, as I pulled his own coat off to examine his back. “No need, Doctor,” he gasped, wincing a little as I prodded at the small bleeding claw-cuts. “Wind knocked out of me but nothing’s broken.  
  
I sat next to Basil in that clump of greasy snow and shook more for fear than from being half-naked in the bitter weather. “That… could have been … tragic.”  
  
“Stupid,” Basil ranted. “Careless. Thoughtless!” I knew he castigated himself.  
  
“Both of us.” I huffed out a laugh. “Providence sent an untrained cat to knock some sense into us.”  
  
“Providence?” Basil wearily laughed next to me. “Or just luck?”  
  
“Lucky for us.” I helped my friend to his feet and we set each other to rights. “Not lucky for that poor black cat.”  
  
“Ha!” Basil resettled my coat over my scarred back and patted my shoulder. “He attacked the wrong mice today.”


End file.
